Hi all,
So to put it mildly, executive function has never been my strong point. My short term memory has always been alarmingly poor.
Sorry for the long back story, but I don't know how to explain otherwise (tl:dr I worked myself to death in a job that caused me to constantly meltdown and I burnt myself out).
Anyway, I'm a secondary school teacher. I moved schools a few years ago after being at the same school for 10 years before that. The move was a promotion and a great opportunity, but ended up being a disaster. Literally everything about working there felt "wrong". Nothing was familiar, it was loud and I could never get into a routine. Plus I was working 80-90 hour weeks to try and keep up with everything I needed to do. I had more meltdowns in two years there than I've had in my entire life - right up until I snapped spectacularly and handed in my notice one morning. I left and did a terribly paid IT job at another school for a few months, before the need to pay the bills kicked in and someone I used to work with offered me a job teaching again.
My problem is, a year and a half after reaching that breaking point, my concentration is still shot. Before it felt like I had a delicate balance between my hyper-focus and my terrible memory - I could spend hours and hours planning lessons and not realise time had passed, whilst all the while constantly getting distracted on different little tasks that made up the lesson (writing a worksheet, then switching window to research something, forgetting about the worksheet and doing something else for a bit before remembering about the worksheet again). It would take me twice as long as it should to get things done, but I would be so focussed on it that it wouldn't matter.
Now, that hyper-focus is so hard/non-existent. My head feels like it's full of cotton wool most of the time and it's a real effort to actually concentrate on anything. Teaching from home at the moment is much easier than being in a noisy school, but even just concentrating to deliver the lessons is exhausting. My sensory issues all seem dialled to 11 - if I'm not teaching, I have the curtains drawn, headphones on and hood up to try and blank out the world and clear my head a little.
I guess my question is, how long can this last? Is it something that gets better over time? I hope so!
